The Whisper of Dried Voices
by ArkTaisch
Summary: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper." Rumplestiltskin saves his son Baelfire from Neverland, but at what cost?


**Author's note:** Alternate ending of "From Troubled Seas", where Rumple succumbs to temptation at the end of chapter 13, changing the past in order to save his firstborn son. This is an AU where Belle has been a joint Dark One since season 5b.

"Our dried voices, when we whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless..." — T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

* * *

This is the end:

A boy sits at his desk, a pen in his hand and a book open in front of him.

The book is called _Once Upon a Time_. Its stories are all true, even the ones that never happened. The pen and the book are tools of fate, and the boy, the Author, is as much their slave as he is their master.

Today he regards a page filled up with words he doesn't remember writing, images he doesn't remember drawing. He knows the faces, but not their actions. The man in the illustration is his grandfather, the Dark One, and the woman he has just run through with a sword is the Green Fairy. Belle, the Dark One's wife, stands to one side, a look of horror frozen on her face.

"No," says the boy. "This can't be right."

"It is not," says a man from behind him. "Hello, Henry."

Henry is not as startled as he should be. It feels as if the man has been watching him forever; he is as familiar as his own name. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

"My name is Gideon." Then the intruder leans forward to tap the image in the book. "This is the moment where we were all undone."

"Belle. She stopped him before, when he was going to kill someone."

"Not this time." In the image, his grandfather holds the sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. The intruder's fingertip moves to the dagger, underlines the name spelled out in tiny letters on the blade.

Henry is shocked by what he reads. "Belle is the Dark One?"

"She's my mother."

"Wait... does that make you my uncle?" Henry's heard stranger things than that, believed stranger things than that.

"That's not important. My father cast a spell that damaged time; he sacrificed Tinker Bell to bring Baelfire to him out of Neverland's past. And that meant you were never born..."

"But I'm sitting here right now. That means I exist."

"Everything's in flux. You have to—" The man vanishes before he finishes the sentence.

There is no boy.

There is no book.

* * *

There is a town in Maine where time stutters and loops back, round and round like a rat in a wheel.

A wheel that's falling to pieces bit by bit, unnoticed.

Another boy flees down Main Street. He doesn't know that this entire town was created for his sake; he doesn't even see it. He runs through a jungle. He finds a beach, not a harbor. He doesn't hear the water lapping against the wooden boats nor the cries of the gulls — his ears hold only the distant singing of wild mermaids.

He picks up a pebble and hurls it as hard as he can. He shouts, though there is no one else there, "You're not my father! My father is dead. Leave me alone!"

If there is a ghost of a voice calling his name, he refuses to hear it.

This boy doesn't exist.

He was never here.

The town is under a curse. No strangers ever come here; no residents ever leave. This truth holds for twenty-eight years of looped time, until the night Emma Swan drives into town in her ancient yellow Bug.

She is brought here by a child who claims to be her son.

She comes here alone. Her car breaks down at the town line, and after she has it towed, she books a room at the only inn in Storybrooke.

"Emma," says the gaunt-faced landlord when he hears her give her name to the innkeeper. "What a lovely name."

There's something sinister in the way he says that, this man who introduces himself as "Mr. Gold" — but Emma doesn't care. She needs to get back on the road as soon as she can. She's a bounty hunter, and she's on a case. She can't afford to let the trail get cold.

"Mom," says the boy who isn't there. "You have to stay, or the curse will never be broken."

She doesn't have a son.

* * *

Emma's son grows up to become the Author.

He sits at his desk with the book open in front of him.

He turns the pages to see Emma dead on the floor of Mr. Gold's pawnshop, a bullet in her heart. The landlord stands over her corpse, leaning on his cane with an enigmatic expression on his face. On the next page, Mr. Gold shakes hands with the mayor, the mayor who has no son, not in this story.

"Everything changed," says Gideon. "Pick up the pen—" And he is gone, was never there.

"This isn't what happened," whispers Henry, but when he sets the pen to the paper, he can't remember how the story goes.

* * *

The corpse is Tinker Bell's. Mr. Gold draws a spiral in the air with the bloodied sword, and the line spins outwards into darkness. He binds fairy blood to the magic of Neverland, the island where time is no more than a matter of belief.

And in this moment, he believes only one thing — that the line he casts can pierce the barrier between past and present to connect him to the one he seeks. His son. The son he was helpless to save, the son he watched die in front of him, the son long dead and buried. But not anymore. Because he has that power now, the power to change what fate decreed.

"Baelfire," he says, and twice more, because a name repeated three times is a summons backed by the weight of magic.

The line distorts. No longer a spiral, it forms itself into a human outline. The outline fills and a boy steps out. He stares back at Mr. Gold, and his eyes go to the blood-stained sword, then to the dead fairy. Horror fills his face and he turns, running.

"Bae!" Mr. Gold tries to follow, but the boy is gone, in a direction that no longer exists. He beats at the wall with the sword, but no path opens for him. In despair, he turns to his wife.

She stands caught in his command, with the unmoving body of their child — Mr. Gold's second son — lying between them.

He lowers the sword and with his other hand, puts the dagger away.

Freed from its magic, Belle stumbles forward a step, face pale with anger and disgust. "What have you done?"

* * *

There is no town in Maine called Storybrooke.

There is a castle in the mountains where a mad imp spins straw into gold, always spinning to forget.

But some things stain the memory forever. A whirlpool of green light, a hand released, and a boy falling into a vortex. That screaming face never leaves him.

"Dark One, I summon thee." A new voice interrupts his nightmares. "Rumplestiltskin, Rumplestiltskin, Rumplestiltskin."

The stranger who calls him does not belong. The imp knows that much, but that is all he can see. The stranger's name eludes his grasp, and he hides his dismay at his failure with a high-pitched giggle and a flourish of his hands. "Well, dearie, what is it you want?"

"For you to stop." The stranger's face is shadowed under a hood. The robe he wears resembles that of a monk, but no monk would countenance a bargain with the Dark One.

"Stop what?"

"This Dark Curse. It must not be cast."

"How do you know of the Dark Curse?" The imp is disturbed again to be at a disadvantage. "Are you a seer?" He hates seers, though he is one himself. Whatever hope he has gleaned from the Sight always turns to pain in the end.

"That doesn't matter. The Dark Curse..."

"No," says the imp. "No deal."

"But you haven't heard my terms..."

"There's nothing you can offer that would buy what you ask."

"Baelfire."

"What?" The imp rocks back, sure that he must have misheard. No one knows the name of his lost son, except the accursed fairies. If this is some new scheme of theirs to torment him... No. The imp raises a hand, ready to choke the life out of this presumptuous stranger.

"Your son. I can bring him to you."

* * *

Henry sits at his desk, the book open before him. The page shows the wedding of a princess and a knight. He knows that they are his parents, but this is not their story. Not the real one.

Henry's desk is in a room in a tower. The tower is part of Snow White's castle in the Enchanted Forest. This is his home, and always has been.

"No. That's not right." He flips the pages. His father is dead. All the world knows that he was the hero who captured the Dark One, but the truth of it is a secret shared only with the Author. The pages that reveal the identity of his father's father are folded and hidden away. Now he finds the illustration of his grandfather in the Evil Queen's dungeon and steps through the picture. "Rumplestiltskin..."

The mad imp doesn't know him, but when he tells him the name of his father, the Dark One is willing to listen.

"Something's wrong, but I don't know what. If I free you, will you help me?"

A deal is struck. Henry uses the power of the Author's pen to write his grandfather free. Once freed, magic confirms their blood relationship.

The imp has his own agenda. He vanishes, and when he appears again, he pours a sack of dry bones out at his feet. Grief and rage and insanity burn underneath his calm words. "She's dead. She died thirty years ago... that's what's wrong."

There are no bones.

There is no bargain struck with the man who isn't a monk, no return for the boy lost to the green vortex.

There is no imp locked in the dungeon beneath the abandoned castle.

Henry sits at his desk in the mayor's house in Storybrooke. The book shows Mr. Gold and Belle again. The sword and the dagger are gone. She holds an infant in her arms, while her husband summons a storm of shadows down to engulf the infant.

"Gideon," murmurs Henry to himself. This must be his uncle in the picture, his age made malleable by the magic of Neverland. In the next picture, Mr. Gold stands alone, his hands outstretched towards empty air, an expression of utter loss on his face.

* * *

"Belle!" He calls her name in vain. She has gone, forever, taking their child with her. His voice drops to a whisper, "Belle, please..."

He slips his hand inside his suit jacket, letting his fingers touch the dagger that bears both their names. Then he thinks better of it, wrenches his hand away. He sags against the wall, head bowed. Baelfire. Belle. Gideon. All have left him. Perhaps it is better so. At least they live. And he cannot hurt them anymore.

He takes a pained breath. Alone again, now and forever. But he is wrong.

A shadow falls across him. "Hello, son."

"You!" Mr. Gold spins to face the mocking grin of his father. Peter Pan looks as deceptively youthful as ever, and his Shadow is a glowing-eyed demon that hovers above them both. "How? The magic of Neverland was dying. You should be dead."

"We should both be dead, yet here we are," says Pan. "You see, I made another deal."

"What deal?"

"Let's just say, with entities from... outside."

"Outside?"

"Outside... time. Outside _everything_. They are named—"

"Don't!" Mr. Gold cuts him off with a sharp gesture and a silencing spell.

Pan chuckles. He breaks his son's magic with ease. "Ah, you've met them before?"

Mr. Gold shakes his head. "I'm not that much of a fool."

"No need to be afraid, laddie. They are grateful for your... assistance."

"I did nothing for them," snaps Mr. Gold, but his face is pale, his heart beating too fast. He knows what he has done, what door he has opened to bring his son to him.

"Then for your dear old dad," says Pan. "Either way, they offer you a reward—"

"No. I don't want it."

"Your loss." Pan smiles his cruel smile. "Don't say I didn't give you a chance."

Then Pan and his Shadow are gone.

Truly alone now, Mr. Gold shoves his magic at the rift he tore open in the weave of time's tapestry. He sews it back together as best he can, but the damage has already been done.

 _Be safe, Belle_ , he wishes her. _Protect our son. And be careful, Bae. Find happiness if you can..._

But a wish in Neverland is only as good as the belief of the one who wishes, and Mr. Gold has long ago stopped believing in the possibility of a happy ending.

* * *

In an empty bedroom in the mayor's house, a swirl of magic brings a whisper of life.

A boy sits at the desk, a book laid out before him and a pen at his hand. A breeze ruffles the pages. They are blank. Then a black- feathered sleeve descends and sweeps over the paper, a slender hand tracing a spell.

The boy reaches out to still the hand. He twists around and sees that it belongs to a woman, one he has never seen before. "What's happening? Where's Gideon?"

"Lost."

"Who are you?"

"Gideon's grandmother." She pulls back from the desk.

Henry studies her face, sees a resemblance. "What do you want?"

"I need to find him. Pick up the pen."

Henry obeys, but he hesitates as he puts the tip to the paper. "I don't understand."

"I think you do." And perhaps he does, but he can barely think. His memories clash inside his head and he can't remember what it is he needs to write.

"Hurry," urges the woman. "My power is keeping us here for now, but we haven't much time."

Words and images take shape on the pages, and Henry writes the story in his confused thoughts...

* * *

Belle has always loved children. A baby, her baby, is a gift, no matter the circumstances of his conception, birth, or miraculous return from the clutches of the Black Fairy. A gift to be cherished and protected from evil, or so she tells herself as she flees her husband as fast and as far as she can.

Which, with the aid of magic, is as fast as thought and as far as memory. She takes her child and steps into daylight. It is still Neverland, but the dead, haunted forest of eternal night has become an open, living wilderness. Perhaps it is her husband's hand propelling the transformation, or perhaps it is a fairy's last wish. In either case, she is grateful to see daylight once more, and she takes a deep breath of clean air, while her son sleeps in her arms.

The brief moment of peace is broken by the jagged whoops of the Lost Boys. Belle gathers her magic, prepares her escape, but the small band of dirt-smeared, gangly teenagers races past her without sparing her so much as a glance. Are they ghosts? Or is she? On impulse, she jogs after the Lost Boys.

Reality ripples in their wake. Belle can taste the distortion on the back of her tongue. She has no understanding of its significance, but curiosity has her in its grip, and she continues to follow, even when the boys splash across a shallow sandbar onto a strip of island.

An unlikely tree grows there, splitting a cluster of rocks to loom wide and drooping over the water. The boys pull themselves up into the low-hanging branches. One by one, they...

...vanish.

An enchanted tree, thinks Belle. She has heard of such things before, trees that span the realms. Have the boys escaped Neverland at last? She approaches the tree with slow, wary steps. She hesitates, clutching her child in one arm while she reaches out with the other to brush her fingers against the rough bark of the trunk.

Then she withdraws her hand. She dares not leave Neverland — the Black Fairy cannot reach her here, but in any other realm, they will be in danger again. So be it. She can make a home here for Gideon if she must.

In her wanderings along the maze of footpaths that criss-cross Neverland, Belle comes across abandoned campsites, half-fallen tree houses, and broken cabins overgrown with vines. It is one such house that she claims as her own. There she lives with her son and does her best to forget his father...

* * *

Henry writes until his fingers cramp and his vision blurs. Finally, he sets down the pen and massages his eyes with his fists. Then he hears the sound of ripping paper.

"Hey!" Henry protests, grabbing for the book, but it is too late.

The hand in the black-feathered sleeve lifts the page away, and the woman freezes Henry where he sits.

She disappears in a swirl of violet smoke.

Henry says nothing.

Henry was never there.

* * *

There is a town in Maine where time runs in an ever-tightening spiral, a descent into a hell of missed chances.

The streets crack under the weight of invisible strains. The wind flares into a hurricane of mad hats and rose petals.

The mayor is oblivious. She has ceased long ago to distinguish between past, present, and future. She lives in memory. Even her thoughts of vengeance are nothing more than dusty remnants littering her heart.

The landlord has not even the comfort of memory. When he isn't making his rounds, he stands at the counter of his pawnshop, empty-eyed, unloved and loveless.

Neither of them hear the cries of the Lost Boys as the course of their endless race takes them straight down Main Street. Shadows break loose where their feet touch the earth, flowing like rainwater into the gutters and the drains. The boys are gone, the boys who were never here, but the darkness remains.

Darkness lingers, darkness spreads. It mingles with the waters that feed the Well of Return. It seeps into the forgotten mines underneath the town, finds the crystals where magic grows like specks of mold, and entwines itself into the curse that strangles Storybrooke...

* * *

The peace of Neverland is ever fragile. Today, yesterday, long ago and tomorrow, it breaks in angry confrontation between a mother and the woman who has stolen her infant son.

Yet all of Belle's fury is toothless: her hands are frozen mid-air, her spells uncast. All her magic, centered on protecting baby Gideon, proves useless when the Black Fairy targets the mother rather than the child. After that, it is an easy matter to lift him from the cradle where he sleeps.

"Foolish girl, I'm doing you a favor." The Black Fairy's smile is gloating, yet not entirely devoid of sympathy. "Your son will be a hero. Isn't that what you wanted for him? Since you've done such a poor job of it yourself..."

Belle can raise no counter-argument. She cannot even speak. She doesn't understand how the Black Fairy can be here, when she was banished from Neverland.

Then the fairy vanishes with the baby in a cloud of violet. The smoke dissipates and a piece of paper flutters to the ground.

Loosed from the magical binding, Belle snatches up the paper. She catches a glimpse of herself before the illustration melts and runs off the page in sizzling drops of color.

* * *

Somewhere along a dreary city street, a crippled beggar sits in a doorway, his eyes shut against the world that has no place for him.

Coins clatter on the ground, missing the plastic cup he holds in a loose grip. The man opens his eyes, and with little conscious direction, his fingers move to scoop up the coins. Then he sees his benefactor. He squints in confusion. "I know you. Who are you?"

"Hello, laddie. A fine fix you've put yourself in." Peter Pan smirks, leans down to offer a hand.

The man pushes the hand away weakly. "No. You're not... not him." He frowns, a jumble of lost memories fighting to surface. "I'm here to find... to find..."

"Yes, I know. I can take you to him. We can be a family again, just like you always wanted."

"No. You're lying." The man is sure of that, even when he can't remember how he knows, even when he can't remember his own name or that of the boy he seeks. He closes his eyes again. "Go away. Leave me alone."

"Afraid I can't do that, son. You see, you need to close the loop." Pan seizes the man by the elbow, forces him to his feet with surprising strength. "And the state you're in, you won't get there without my help."

The man struggles to break free, but he is too weak.

Pan twirls his other hand, and the world vanishes around them...

* * *

Henry sits at his desk in the mayor's house in Storybrooke.

The book lies open before him. The illustration shows a busy Manhattan street, a stream of traffic and pedestrians in a man-made canyon. All is as it has always been, except for one detail. The shadows... the shadows are twisted, distorted. They rise from the sidewalks, detach themselves from walls, and catch their source in an obscene embrace.

"What..." Henry stares in horror at the image.

"They've broken through," says Gideon. "The ones from outside."

It is an infection. Henry reads the words on the page, words he doesn't remember writing. An infection of darkness carried by the Lost Boys, who have escaped the chains of time to run loose in all the realms. Their shadows are rotten with the _things_ that creep through the void _outside_. "How do we stop them? What do we do?"

"Take the pen," says Gideon. "Find my father—" And he is gone.

Henry picks up the pen. It feels slippery in his grasp, and he can barely keep his hand from shaking. He turns to the next empty page and begins to write...

* * *

The tree is the only thing holding him upright. Mr. Gold presses his hands against his temples, his head pounding with the effort of trying to reconcile half a dozen conflicting timelines. Hair falls across his eyes, and that is wrong, because...

Because he cut his hair when...

When he came back from...

The Temple of Morpheus. Where he had gone to wake Belle, who had fallen under a sleeping curse when they were in...

In the underworld. Dizzy, he tries to remember if he is dead or alive. He has a son. He has two sons. Because Belle...

Belle is alive...

Belle is dead...

She is gone, because he...

Because he killed the green fairy. He can still feel the sword in his hand, the enchanted sword, coated with fairy blood and glowing with all the power of Neverland. Power that he used to...

Call his son...

His son who is gone again...

Because he will never forgive his father.

 _Rumplestiltskin!_ The call comes from the other side of the island and the far side of time. He knows the voice, because he hears it always, somewhere in his heart. He follows the pull of his name...

* * *

"Belle." The Rumplestiltskin who answers her summons is a frail wreck of a man.

Shocked at his appearance, she forgets her anger and hastily throws her arms around him before he collapses to the ground. "Rumple..."

He sags in her embrace. "I'm sorry."

And her anger is back. "She took him, Rumple. You said that Neverland was the one place the Black Fairy couldn't reach us, but she found me and stole Gideon."

His face hidden behind a fringe of hair, he says in a low voice, "Time."

"What?"

"She couldn't _then_ , but this...now...this is before. Before she was banished. I told you... time is broken in Neverland. That was how... how I reached Bae." His form wavers as he struggles to stand up straight, shifts for a moment between different versions of himself.

Belle grips him more tightly. "You have to undo it."

"I...I can't. Bae..."

"Dead is dead." She is too desperately exhausted to indulge his failures now, not when reality is disintegrating around them and her own heart is drowning in darkness. "Stop obsessing over your dead son! Three centuries is enough. Let it go. Let _him_ go!"

He refuses. "You don't understand..."

She understands enough. He gives her no choice, so she gives him none. This time, he doesn't even look surprised when Belle takes the dagger from him. She issues her commands with no more remorse. "Undo what you've done. Do whatever it takes."

He pleads for mercy, but she has none, not now. "You don't know what you're asking..."

"Just do it."

And he can't fight the dagger's control. He has no choice but to obey.

 _Do whatever it takes._

* * *

 _What you've done cannot be undone._

That, thinks Mr. Gold, is the truth of it. But he is bound to attempt it, so he tries. He steps into the widening cracks in the rent fabric of time and finds a moment when the green fairy is alone. Simple enough to use magic to remove her. No fairy. No temptation. Nothing to undo.

No one to undo it.

Mr. Gold impales Tinker Bell on the enchanted sword while Belle looks on in horror.

 _Do whatever it takes._ The command recreates itself, and Mr. Gold steps again through time to find himself holding sword and dagger, caught a moment before he kills the fairy. He wraps his fingers around his own hand on the hilt of the dagger and tells himself to stop. Both versions of Mr. Gold vanish.

 _Undo what you've done._ A third time. He watches his father appear in a swirl of smoke, bringing the lost, lame amnesiac version of himself to the heart of Neverland. With a gesture, Pan summons Tinker Bell, then arms his son with the sword. Pan's magic makes puppets of them both.

Mr. Gold cuts the strings.

It never happens.

Cast again into the uncertainty of paradox, he is caught on the unbreakable line of the dagger's compulsion.

 _Focus,_ he tells himself. From bad to worse is no solution at all. He cannot change events without undoing the cause of the changes. He needs to separate his timeline from itself, and for that, he needs to live two lives. He knows how...

It is nothing he is willing to do...

 _Do whatever it takes._ He has no choice. He steps once more into the past, his past.

* * *

There is a boy's bedroom in Storybrooke with a desk, and on the desk lie a book and a pen.

But the boy is gone. Was never there.

Gideon picks up the book and the pen. "Thank you, Henry."

The room is empty.

Has always been empty.

* * *

Long ago in a land of fairy tales, a woman named Milah gives birth.

Cloaked by shadows, Mr. Gold watches, his hand raised, ready to cast the spell that will steal the life from his newborn son. _Bae..._

He doesn't want to. But he will.

He draws out the moment of hesitation as long as he can, fighting the command ( _Undo what you've done. Do whatever it takes._ ) with all his strength.

He is weak.

 _Just do it!_ She doesn't know. This outcome is none of her intention.

Intent is meaningless. He looses the spell...

...and it fails. Because he is too late. Overwhelmed by shock and guilt, he takes himself away, deep into the forest where there is no one to witness his breakdown.

Gideon is there. "Father."

Mr. Gold lifts his gaze to see his younger (older) son looking back at him. He holds in his hand a page ripped from Henry's book. The illustration depicts the fateful day of Rumplestiltskin's return from the Ogres War, the first meeting between the self-crippled spinner and his newborn son. Already the ink runs and distorts on the paper, because— "Pan has him. Has Baelfire's life. That means my father is free from the laws of time. Which means... nothing good."

"You still have me," says Gideon.

"No."

"You have no choice." Gideon twirls a hand, and the book and the pen materialize in his father's lap.

 _Do whatever it takes._

"Run," Mr. Gold begs his son — Belle's son. But he has his mother's courage and stays, choosing his own fate. "This is the destiny you always feared. Destroyed by your own father... run!"

"It's too late to run."

"It's too late for everything." Mr. Gold flicks through the pages, stops when he finds an image of an infant Gideon in his bassinet, the Black Fairy looming behind him in the background. "Even if I succeed, Pan will still be out there. He's allied himself with—"

He may be unwilling to name those allies, but Gideon knows enough. "Do what you can. Save what you can. Please, Father."

 _Just do it._

"I'm sorry." Mr. Gold holds the Author's pen like a wand. He brushes a hand over the image and casts the spell that dooms his son. "I love you..."

 _I love you..._ An echo, or a last lingering thought from his son whose life is undone.

Tears cannot bring him back. Mr. Gold can only hope that Gideon's soul finds something on the far side of oblivion.

* * *

 _Undo what you've done._

Mr. Gold presses the tip of a sword against Tinker Bell, her unconscious form suspended in the air by his bespelled shadow. Belle looks on in horror while Gideon lies on the ground.

Gideon isn't there.

Instead, a second Mr. Gold stands up from the floor and stops time. He touches the dagger and commands himself to forget, commands Belle to forget.

Time resumes, and all they remember is that Gideon died despite their best efforts. Their grief is difficult to bear, but better that than the truth: their son was a changeling. There was never a Gideon.

The changeling takes himself away. Somewhere, somewhen, the other changeling — Pan — runs free, spreading corruption wherever he goes.

* * *

In a bedroom in Storybrooke, a book returns to a desk.

"Henry," says the changeling Mr. Gold.

"Gideon?" asks Henry, called once more into being. "What's happening? Did it work?"

"I'm not Gideon. But that's not important right now." He pushes the Author's pen into Henry's hand. "It's Pan we need to find."

"But Peter Pan is dead."

"He died. It's not the same. Events change."

The changes overwhelm the ability of pen and paper to capture. Shadows crawl everywhere. They overflow the page and devour the room.

"I don't understand," says Henry, but it's too late. Darkness floods over him and he is gone.

The changeling flings up a hand, driving the darkness back for a moment, but Henry does not return. Pages explode out with the blast of power, scatter to the twelve winds. He curses and vanishes.

* * *

With nothing left for them in Neverland, Rumplestiltskin and Belle return to the Enchanted Forest in memory of better days. They reclaim their old home, the dark castle in the remote mountains, and there they stay, lost in grief and guilt. Memory can only drive them apart.

The imp sits at his spinning wheel, coils of gold thread accumulating at his feet.

Belle hides in the library, losing herself in stories.

So pass the days, one after the other. Then comes the night when the Black Fairy finds them, and tells them what Rumplestiltskin has done.

"Rumple destroyed our son?" Belle's disbelief wars with outrage.

"At your command," says the Black Fairy, malice dripping from every word. "Indirectly. So one could say it's your fault."

"No." The imp is there, standing between his wife and his mother. "None of this happened. You're lying."

"Perhaps none of this happened, but it's still the truth."

"Why? Why are you telling us such horrible things?" Belle's voice breaks on the question.

"Because the world is ending, and I just wanted you to know...know the truth, before I—" Before she can finish her sentence, shadows erupt from the Black Fairy's every orifice, spreading over her body until nothing is left but a flattened silhouette.

Rumplestiltskin and Belle are already gone, fled to a clearing in the wilderness outside the castle.

"The world is ending?" Belle grips the imp by the arms, as if she can shake the answers from her husband.

"I don't know."

Then a voice summons him from across the void. _Rumplestiltskin!_

* * *

The changeling Mr. Gold holds the dagger now.

"How is this possible?" Rumplestiltskin looks into his own face, meets the fully human version of his own eyes.

"The version of Belle from my timeline was undone. The dagger survived, because it's bound to me." He shows himself the dagger, and it has only a single name on it.

"Then it's true, what the Black Fairy said." Rumplestiltskin shakes his head, but it's not a denial. Hope drains out of him. "I've lost them both... and it was my fault, both times."

The changeling Mr. Gold knows his guilt and self-loathing as well as he knows his own. But, "Self-recrimination is futile."

That gets Rumplestiltskin's attention. He takes in their surroundings. They stand under a red sky, on the banks of — "The River of Souls. Why have you brought us to the underworld?"

"It's the last refuge. Or the last escape."

"Escape?"

"We've lost. Time is irrevocably broken. I've tried everything, _everything_ else." The changeling pauses, and Rumplestiltskin wonders how long he's been trying to mend things. He knows that they are capable of enduring for _centuries_ if need be.

"I see."

"Do you?" The changeling flicks his fingers, conjuring an illustrated piece of paper to his hand. Before Rumplestiltskin can make out the details, the changeling folds the paper into a tiny boat and drops it into the River of Souls.

"That's a page from Henry's book," says Rumplestiltskin. "Whoever was on that page... you've erased their story!"

"I've set them free," the changeling corrects him. "In the world above, shadows run amok. Fate is corrupted to the will of... entities best left unnamed. Humanity is reduced to empty husks cursed to lives of meaningless repetition."

"As it was under the Dark Curse..."

"Yes, except far worse, and encompassing far more."

"You think this oblivion is better?" Rumplestiltskin looks into the water, where souls lost are lost _forever_ , as far as he knows.

"That is my hope. Wherever the water flows, it is no place within our time, and therefore no place _they_ can reach."

Rumplestiltskin thinks about it, and in the end, finds no alternative to his other self's grim conclusions. "All right. But why summon me?"

This time, the changeling allows him to see the image on the page he holds. It shows them, Rumplestiltskin and Belle, dancing together. The background blurs and changes, as does his face and garb, but his identity is constant, as is the dance.

"Tell her," says the changeling quietly, not meeting his eyes. "Before the end."

* * *

He finds her. He tells her everything.

For the last time, they face their fate together. They cling to each other, full of regrets.

"I love you," he says, as does she. It is the last time they will ever say the words before love ceases to mean anything.

* * *

In the underworld, a paper boat drifts down the River of Souls.

 _What you've done cannot be undone..._

Once upon a time, there was a room, a desk, a book, a pen, and a boy who was the Author.

The pages are blank.

The pen is dry.

There is no author. There is no book. There never was.

Once upon a time... there was nothing.


End file.
